


A Common Mind

by spinstitcher (stygian)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5ARD, F/M, Intersex, Intersex Tony, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, M/M, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Queer Themes, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:24:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stygian/pseuds/spinstitcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is a badass, bitchy genius, and what's in his trousers has nothing to do with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ , Book IV, a poem about Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. Hermaphroditus was a minor deity associated with bisexuality and effeminacy, known for having a body with mingled sex characteristics; this myth was also the origin of the term "hermaphrodite", which I should point out is considered a misleading and pejorative term when referring to intersex people.
> 
> _Last in one face are both their faces joined,_  
>  _As when the stock and grafter twig combined_  
>  _Shoot up the same, and wear a common mind:_  
>  _Both bodies in a single body mix,_  
>  _A single body with a double sex._
> 
> Mainly I wanted to write this because the term "intersex" gets bandied about a lot in this fandom, particularly with regard to Loki, and, uh... I don't think that word means what you think it means.

In the spring of 1969, during a miserable cold spell, Maria Stark gives birth in a lonely manor in the centre of Manhattan. The birth comes on the heels of several heartbreaking miscarriages. By her fifth pregnancy Maria had been thoroughly sick of hospitals, wanting nothing more to do with sterile waiting rooms and rich white doctors looking down their noses at her, so she had employed Giuseppina Bellomi, a portly midwife hailing from the same small Italian town as Maria herself.

When Maria gives birth to her first child, she and Giuseppina are entirely alone in the enormous Stark family manor. Howard Stark is attending a conference in London, scheduled to return in three days, and for this reason Maria is left to deal with the crisis of Tony Stark's birth by herself, for which Tony will later be very grateful for.

After all the blood and screaming and cleanup, the as-yet-unnamed Tony is wrapped in a little yellow swaddling cloth, held in Maria's arms, while she and Giuseppina sit in Howard's lavish study and wonder what to do. There is a bottle of fine Scotch on the table, unopened, between them.

"Have you ever heard of this happening before?" Maria asks, mouth twisted. She clutches Tony tighter to her chest, and the child lets out a protesting baby-grumble.

"It’s not as rare as you'd think," says Giuseppina. "Usually, in hospitals, they are quite drastic. You have a choice. What do you want to do?"

"I don't want to do anything," says Maria. Her voice is very small and very quiet.

Giuseppina shrugs. "Then do nothing."

Maria is silent for a long moment.

Then she says, "I don't know which name to pick." It's a weightier decision than it sounds.

"Which name?" says Giuseppina. "Tony, or Antonia? Pick either one - and then in a few years, let the child decide." Her eyes are dark and fierce. Maria takes a shuddering breath, strokes a hand over Tony's face, and makes her decision.

Three days later, when Howard Stark returns, he is told three things: that he has a son, that his son's name is Tony Stark, and that under no circumstances are there ever to be any doctors involved without Tony's consent. Later he is told another secret thing, something that only Maria and Giuseppina know. Howard is angry for a while, but Maria won't budge. Later, when Howard has the chance to do some research, he calms down a little.

Here is the secret thing: the tiny, loud child named Tony Stark has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, leaving with him what the doctors of the time call "ambiguous genitalia". In 1969 this is a dangerous thing. Luckily for Tony Stark, his mother is a dangerous person.

-

When Tony is seven years old, he hears the word "intersex" for the first time. His family tells him that it is a secret and that he mustn't tell anyone. Tony, at age seven, who can already build circuit boards and engines, who has exactly three friends and a butler, doesn't know why it's such a big deal. He looks pretty similar to his friends until you look down his trousers. Tony doesn't see why it should matter what's in your trousers. Tony is a little naive.

He tries to find out more, but there are a limited number of sources on the subject, and his parents are reluctant to share their own knowledge. In 1976 there are no prominent people who are intersex - or who know that they are intersex. Many people who are intersex are not even aware of it; some have chromosomal differences that they have never been tested for, some have gonadal differences invisible to the naked eye, and some have bodies that have been surgically altered without their consent or knowledge. 

The birth of an intersex child, in the popular opinion of the medical profession, is a disaster that must be corrected as soon as possible, attended by a fleet of specialised surgeons and endocrinologists (but not psychologists). These doctors perform what they call "emergency" surgeries in order to force children into bodies that align more with traditional views of binary gender. Usually this means assigning a child as female, since, as one disgusting specimen will later state on the record, "It's easier to dig a hole than build a pole." Apparently it is considered far worse to live as a man with a small penis (or a woman with an enlarged clitoris) than to live as a woman with most of her genitalia removed against her will.

Surgeries are performed early so as to avoid uncomfortable questions later in life. The children are usually kept in the dark; sometimes the parents are too.

Tony Stark is one of the lucky few to escape surgery and form a bodily awareness and a (somewhat) stable gender identity without medical interference. He will often wonder why surgery is considered so necessary; surgeries are performed to enforce an idea of "naturalness", of "normality", of "biology", and yet Tony's body is entirely natural, entirely normal, entirely biological - unlike the fallacious sex binary that his doctors seek to enforce.

At age thirteen Tony begins to develop facial hair. In the following years he will tenderly nurture a rather fluffy little goatee that he considers his pride and joy. Tony's particular flavour of intersex means that he will never go bald, a fact which he takes great delight in. By the time he gains acceptance to MIT he is quite comfortable with who he is, brushing off any suggestions from his father or from Obadiah Stane that he might seek out hormone therapy in order to make him into a "real" man.

He meets a young James Rhodes and the two become fast friends. Tony loses his virginity to a physicist with a low voice, ridiculous level of intelligence, and magnificent breasts. Later he loses his virginity again to an engineer with slightly less amazing breasts but a beautiful dick to make up for it. They don't care about the size or shape of Tony's genitalia. There are more pressing concerns to think about when you're having clandestine sex in an empty lab.

He doesn’t tell Howard that he’s bisexual. He knows it would just be another disappointment; just another nail in the coffin, another reason that Tony isn’t quite the perfect _son_ that his father always wanted him to be.

Rhodey knows everything, of course; Tony's stumbled into their shared apartment drunk and half-asleep with his pants around his ankles too many times to keep everything a secret. Rhodey says he doesn't care but Tony knows he doesn't quite know what to make of it. Mainly Rhodey is just sick of Tony having sex in their shared kitchen, really. "It's not hygienic, Tony. We eat in there, Tony." Sure Tony eats in there. Eats pussy, anyway.

He thinks long and hard about his gender identity. Most people with 5-ARD are assigned male at birth, just like most people with AIS are assigned female. It’s not something that Tony chose for himself. He could go either way, hormone therapy or no hormone therapy.

Eventually he settles somewhat. He’s cool with being a dude, at least for now. Who gives a crap what’s in his trousers? He’s comfortable in his body, he’s comfortable in the life he’s made for himself.

Anyway, it’s what Howard wants, so Tony’s kidding himself if he thinks there was ever any real choice involved.

Tony makes a robot and goes snorkeling for the first time and finds a flaw in one of his professor's theories, thus pissing off most of the faculty and ensuring that Tony will remain a legendary figure in MIT lore for decades to come. He gets an inadvisable tattoo in an unmentionable place and he drinks his weight in cheap beer and he falls off a roof. He manages to graduate summa cum laude, and despite what everyone thinks it’s not because he bribed his professors. He’s enjoying himself. He’s rich, young, beautiful, and incredibly smart. He’s living the dream.

And then when Tony is nineteen his parents die in a car crash in Naples, and everything changes.

-

It rains on the day of the funeral, and Tony stands there with a black umbrella watching his parents being lowered into the ground, getting increasingly sodden, and cursing pathetic fallacy.

Obie sidles up to him at one point and slings an arm around his shoulders. It’s meant to be comforting but Tony just feels caged in. Everything is going wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

“You know things are going to be different now,” says Obie quietly, so that no one but Tony will hear him. “You’re the head of the company, you’ll have to set an example. Clean up your act. Forget all… this.” He gestures around vaguely, and Tony knows what he must see. Tony Stark, sex-crazed teenager, genius who just can’t apply himself, long hair, stupid attempt at a goatee, too much money and not enough morals.

“I can help you,” says Obie. He chooses his words carefully. “There are… certain doctors I could take you to… I promise they’re discreet. You’re going to be in the public eye a hell of a lot more, now. I’m only thinking of your best interests, son.”

“I’m not your son,” says Tony, and then he stares ahead and says nothing for the next few hours.

The rain soaks through his shoes, slowly. He can feel everything falling apart.

-

He starts the hormone therapy.

-

Two years later he becomes the CEO of Stark Industries. In that time his goatee has become magnificent, and Tony tends it with more care than he gives to his company. Obie is always by his side, a guardian angel, and somehow Tony manages to pull everything together. He learns how to smile prettily for the cameras, how to charm the most beautiful ladies. He stops stepping out with men in public. He makes sure to cultivate a certain _persona_. He has to think of the company; they’d lose all their government contracts if it came out that Tony is – the way he is.

The year after that he finds Pepper, only at that point she’s just a junior analyst who finds a fatal flaw in one of Tony’s calculations. He promotes her immediately. Pepper makes a great PA. She sasses him and she’s terrible at making coffee but it’s worth it to have someone who sees him as human, who knows how to curb his wilder excesses. Obie would let Tony run himself into the ground if it meant having the latest innovations. Pepper knows to handcuff him to his bed if he goes for more than three days without sleep. (Tony won't comment as to why he keeps handcuffs by his bed.)

The year after that, the Intersex Society of North America is created, and a whole new world opens up for him. They publish pamphlets, organise support networks and retreats, and Tony greedily reads every single one of their publications. Finally he has access to other people like him, finally he is not alone.

He goes to a couple of meetings, when he can find the time, when he can be sure he’s not being followed by the press or by his company. He wears sunglasses and a thick scarf and he tries to speak in a higher pitch so that no one will recognise him. He’s pretty sure some of them do anyway, but none of them say anything. They all know what it’s like to have to hide.

He meets a woman named Martha who's writing her dissertation in women's studies. He meets a man called Rajesh who's studying to become a doctor, so he can do exactly the opposite of what the doctors did to him. Someone cries on Tony's shoulder, once, and the next week that same person bakes cookies in the shape of tiny penises and vulvas and the group takes great pleasure in breaking the cookies into bits and mixing them around. Tony tells them about his work sometimes, not the classified parts, not the parts that would give away his identity, but enough that he feels like they have a good grasp of who he is. Who Tony is, not who Tony Stark is.

It feels like a release.

It feels like a death sentence.

The ISNA is a guilty pleasure, and Tony knows that he can’t keep going to meetings, can’t keep indulging himself like this. He has the company to think of. He’s getting dangerously addicted to the feeling of not having to hide, and that’s not good for him or for Stark Industries. It’s not practical or feasible, and he’s only going to hurt himself worse in the long run.

So he stops.

It’s lonely, but when has Tony Stark ever not been lonely?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: discussion of rape, no actual rape.

During Tony's second year at MIT he'd created DUM-E, also known as the most simultaneously embarrassing and endearing robot ever to walk the earth. U and Butterfingers had followed a few years after that, ostensibly created to do odd jobs around the lab, actually created to keep Tony company. He'd deny that to anyone who asked him, of course. Like Obie always says, you can't afford to show anybody your weaknesses, and Tony's robots are his weakness. He loves them like children. Actually, that's not an apt comparison; Tony's fairly certain he loves his robots more than Howard ever loved him. He loves them like... people he loves very much.

In the summer of 2003, after gruelling years of work, Tony finishes writing JARVIS. JARVIS is the most advanced artificial intelligence the world has ever seen, a groundbreaking creation, a beautiful supernova of intellect and design. Naturally, Tony hides his existence from the world, even tries to hide him from Obie, though that doesn't last long.

JARVIS is his. His guardian angel, his protector, his warning bell. JARVIS is his butler, his security system, his best friend. JARVIS is everything and Tony is jealously selfish of him. Obie is furious when Tony refuses to release the details of JARVIS's system to the world. It would revolutionise the science of artificial intelligence, but for once in his life Tony couldn't give a flying shit about science. JARVIS is his and only his. End of story.

-

In Afghanistan Tony spends the whole time praying, desperately, to any fucked-up god that might listen, that the insurgents will never think to look inside his trousers, never find out exactly what he is hiding from them. 

These people have clearly never heard of the Geneva Convention, and when it comes to Tony's bodily autonomy, he doesn't trust them as far as he can throw them. They're such a mix of cultures and religions that he doesn't trust cultural taboos to prevent them from raping him, either. Then again, if they really wanted to rape him, they'd probably have done so already. A couple of the guards have made the occasional sleazy comment but that's the worst that's happened in that regard. 

They already think he's a Western devil. Fuck knows what they'll do if they find out his body is as aberrant as his mind.

Yinsen knows, and he helps him when he can; stands in front of the camera when Tony needs to piss, subtly redirects the guards when they start getting too crass. Tony is hopelessly grateful to him, but at the same time he can't quite figure the guy out. What the hell is Yinsen getting out of this?

Eventually Tony figures that Yinsen just wants to stay on his good side so that they can both get out of here in one piece. There are only a few reasons why anyone puts up with Tony, and they usually come down to either his money or his mind. Yinsen just wants to get home and see his family, and he wouldn't give two shits about Tony if he wasn't useful to him. Right?

Tony's never been more wrong in his life.

When he breaks his way out of there, clanking and burning, Yinsen's words echo around and around in his mind, on constant loop. 

_Don't waste it_ , the man had said.  _Don't waste your life, Stark._

_-_

When Tony gets home he eats a cheeseburger and he calls a press conference and then he donates a fuckton of money to every intersex and queer rights organisation he can think of. It's not enough, it's never enough, but it's something.

-

After Obadiah, after Vanko, after that little weasel Justin Hammer, Tony is exhausted. The world keeps throwing punches and every time it sends Tony reeling. Tony had been dying and instead of pulling himself together he'd spiralled even further out of control. What would Yinsen think of him now?

When he kisses Pepper on the roof he feels punch-drunk, loony. This thing between them has been building for a long time but he still doesn't really know what to expect from her. She comes home with him that night but they don't fuck, they just kiss and cuddle and watch  _Star Wars_ until two in the morning. When Tony shakes out of a nightmare at five a.m. Pepper doesn't blink an eyelash, she just holds him close and says, "I'm here. You're safe, Tony, I'm right here with you."

He's never safe, he wants to tell her, but instead he just presses a kiss to her freckled shoulder and goes back to sleep.

A few hours later he wakes up again and Pepper's snoring like a jackhammer, dead to the world. Tony pokes her experimentally in the thigh, but she just rolls over and makes an adorably gross little slurping sound. He gets up and wanders into the kitchen, makes some coffee, checks what the news outlets are saying. Mostly the consensus seems to be that the mess at the Expo wasn't his fault, but that he's still too reckless, too trigger-happy, still too much of a playboy to be that moralistic hero they've all been waiting for. Maybe Rhodey will check that box, given enough time, but at the moment everyone seems to think that Rhodey's just another warmonger. Word is his superiors are thinking of giving him a fancy makeover.

Tony cracks an egg in the pan and tells JARVIS to turn the news off, he's had enough, give him something light and cheerful. JARVIS, seemingly out of spite, puts on  _Iron Man: Armoured Adventures,_  that horribly trite and slightly libellous kids' cartoon based (very) loosely on Tony's superheroic adventures.

He chops up a bunch of mushrooms, and throws some chives in. He tries to cut up some tomatoes too, but he must press at the wrong angle or something because tomato juice spurts everywhere, leaving little flecks of juice and seeds all over the kitchen counter. Cayenne pepper is good with omelets, right? Fuck it, Pepper loves cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper it is. Possibly Tony puts in a little too much (half the jar), but hell, breakfast should be an adventure.

Coffee. He'll make coffee. Pepper will love that, she's still totally shit at making coffee. Actually, he thinks she'd said something once about preferring tea. Fuck, what if Pepper hates coffee? What if Tony makes her coffee and she hates it and she quits again and dumps him and runs off to Silicon Valley to make her millions?

Okay. No coffee. Tea is fine. Tony's pretty sure he's got some tea in here somewhere. Green tea. There are different colours of tea? This is way more complicated than he'd thought. Also, the omelet is burning.

Twenty minutes later the doorbell rings and Tony pays the delivery lady fifty bucks to help him make it look like the takeaway pancakes are homemade. Mostly this involves plating them up and drizzling a ridiculous amount of syrup all over them. They do this in the hallway, because the kitchen still smells like smoke. JARVIS disapproves.

It all turns out to be a bit futile, because Tony doesn't want to actually wake Pepper up, she needs her sleep, and so while he's waiting for her to become conscious he gets kind of hungry and eats most of the pancakes himself. What? They're delicious. Delicious sugary pancakes of joy and also heartburn. 

And then he falls asleep on the sofa and wakes up to Pepper leaning over him, her ginger hair falling over his face and tickling his nose. Her hair smells like lemongrass shampoo. 

"Hi," says Tony, belatedly realising that he is shirtless and covered in pancake crumbs.

"Hi," says Pepper. Her eyes are crinkled at the corners in the way they get when she's trying really hard not to laugh at him. Tony appreciates the effort, really, he does.

"Uhh," he says. "I made you breakfast. It didn't go so well."

"It's okay," says Pepper. She curls up next to him on the sofa, resting her head on his shoulder. "I had cereal." She's wearing a geeky shirt and pyjama pants and no bra. The shirt has a picture of Marie and Pierre Curie and it says  _IS IT LOVE, OR TOXIC RADIATION? BABY IT'S BOTH, BUT WHO CARES._

Tony gnaws his lip. "I'm going to disappoint you a lot," he blurts out. "If we go ahead with, uh, with us, I mean. So. I'm sorry."

Pepper's eyes are soft and blue, and looking into them feels like flying in the Iron Man suit, like diving into endless skies. "Okay," she says. "How about this: you don't apologise to me until you have something to apologise for."

"But there  _will_  be something," says Tony, a little desperately. "Like, I'm going to flake out on you sometimes. And I'm a superhero, I'm going to get injured occasionally, and I'll have to stand you up on dates to go save the world, and I'm not, I'm not, I don't think I'm really cut out for monogamy."

"Okay," says Pepper easily.

Tony blinks at her. "What?"

She shrugs. "I'm going to flake out on you sometimes, too. I'll have meetings that can't be cancelled and last-minute appointments. I'm a workaholic and I've never had a functional relationship in my life. If monogamy doesn't work for you, then we can try polyamory. We'll try to make it work, and at the point where it stops working, we stop. Sound fair?"

Tony stares at her and then blinks and stares and then stares some more. "Um," he says. "Okay. Hold that thought. I'm just - I'm going to show you something and then if you still want to do this we can do it, we'll have date nights, we'll have dinner with each other, we'll sync our schedules and get tested for STIs and sort everything out. Just. Look." He takes a deep breath, stands up off the sofa, and shucks his trousers.

There is a bit of a silence and Tony starts to feel uncomfortable, and also cold, because he's standing here buck naked and it's chilly in here. "Pep?"

Pepper's blushing, and it makes her freckles stand out, and it's the most goddamn adorable thing Tony's ever seen in his life. "Sorry," she squeaks. "Are we having a moment? I just - I don't know what you want me to say here."

"Tell me if it's okay," says Tony, throat seizing up a little.

She frowns. "If what's okay?"

He lets out a frustrated breath, gestures at his dick. It only takes a glance to be able to tell that his body is not like other male bodies.

Pepper's face hardens, and he's sure that this is it, it's over, and then she says, "Tony, you know that  _you're_  okay, right? It's not up to me to decide that for you. It's not up to anyone. You're okay."

"Stop," says Tony. "Stop, please, you're too perfect, are you a robot?"

"I'm not a robot," says Pepper. She is trying very determinedly not to let her gaze slip below Tony's chest, but every so often she fails and her blush deepens. There's a smear of maple syrup on his hipbone and her gaze lingers there for a while.

"Am I distracting you?" asks Tony, smirking a little. The anxiety is gone and the smugness is back in its place. He knows he's got a rockin' bod, fuck what society says, it's just that sometimes it's nice to hear that from someone else.

"Please can we have sex now," says Pepper, all in a rush. Tony looks up at her, startled, and realises that the blush is arousal and not embarrassment. Something hot curls deep in his belly, and he smiles.

He's at least 57% sure that he's in love with Pepper, but he's going to have to experiment a bit first, maybe subject it to peer review. 'Scientifically rigorous' is his middle name. 

Okay, no, it's Edward, but close enough.

-

After New York, Tony falls apart.

His dreams are plagued by visions of the void gaping out in front of him, the  _coldness_ , the sight of thousands of alien ships crumbling into a fiery conflagration. Howard Stark worked on the Manhattan Project, and Tony's followed right in dear old dad's footsteps. He's a monster and he can feel the monstrousness within him. Loki tried to steal his heart but there wasn't any heart to steal.

He cuts off contact with the rest of the Avengers, not that it's difficult. Captain Tightpants is off road-tripping around the country, Thor's still in Asgard babysitting the little bro, the assassin duo are all caught up with SHIELD assignments, and Bruce... Bruce had stayed the longest of all of them, helping to rebuild the city, to aid the wounded, but eventually Tony couldn't bear to be in New York any longer. He'd asked Bruce to come with him back to Malibu, but he'd declined. When Tony was ready to come back, Bruce had promised, he'd be waiting for him. Tony really didn't know what to do with that. So he ran away. Just like he always does. Too cowardly to face his own heart.

He pulls away from Pepper, too. He's in the workshop at all hours, obsessively creating suit after suit. He needs to be prepared for anything. He needs to be prepared to go into space, to go underwater, to dive into a volcano. He needs to be able to lock onto targets and navigate a nuclear bomb and prop up a collapsing building. The only problem is, no one suit could do all of that at once. So Tony builds a suit for every occasion, and he gives JARVIS full control over them.

He needs Pepper to be safe. Tony offers to build her a suit, her own armour, but she's not interested. So he builds one anyway. He needs to be  _sure._ These days Pepper is the only thing keeping him from flying apart in all directions.

When push comes to shove, it was all for nothing. He can't save her from being captured by Killian, can't save her from falling.

Pepper's strong, though, stronger than anyone gives her credit for. 

She saves herself.

Tony really should have seen that coming.

-

Tony gets a good look at Extremis for the first time in thirteen years, and it opens up before him, a whole universe of glorious possibility. He can stabilise Pepper. He can get the ache out of his chest, the sleepless nights, the constant low pain pressing against his lungs. He can increase his healing factor, his strength, his intelligence. He can write Iron Man into every cell of his body; he could call up the suit with just a thought.

He could change his body.

-

Bruce's chest is very soft. Furry and soft. Tony rubs his cheek against it and keeps talking, his voice a low babble in the comfortable silence of the room. He traces strange patterns on Bruce's skin. "You know, I've been thinking... Something about just getting it off my chest, putting it out there in the atmosphere... I'd like to start going to intersex meetings again. Maybe I'll come out on national television. Again. Wow, I had no idea you were such a good listener."

Bruce lets out a snore.

Tony pokes him in the shoulder and he starts awake. "You with me?"

"Uhhh..."

Tony scowls. 

"I'm sorry, I'm... not that kind of doctor," says Bruce. "I'm not a therapist, I don't have the..."

"Time?"

"Temperament."

Tony grumbles a little, shifts around on the sofa, and checks his watch. "Hey, we've got dinner with Pepper in half an hour, anyway. Date night. Can't miss date night."

Bruce yawns. "What happens if the Hulk goes up against Pepper Potts?"

"Pepper wins," says Tony.

-

Tony could have done anything with Extremis. He could have rewritten his body from the ground up, made it more like other bodies, made it a body that Howard Stark would have been proud of.

Did Tony do that?

Fuck no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pepper's shirt exists; you can find it [here](http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=BEAT-CURIES&Category_Code=BEAT).
> 
> A few lines at the end are poached from the _Iron Man 3_ post-credits scene.
> 
> I have really loved reading the feedback for this. Thank you all for giving me yet more reasons to love this fandom.

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to learn more about intersex, the Organisation Intersex International (http://oiiinternational.com/) is a great resource, made by and for intersex people.
> 
> I have tried to be as respectful as possible when writing on this topic, but if you have any concerns with my handling of the subject matter then please do let me know.


End file.
